Credit Card Updates

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on H.R. 627, the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights, a bill AFFIL and our Partners support and have been following closely.  The bill passed the House last year as H.R. 5422 by a vote of 312-112.  If you haven’t contacted your Representative yet about it, now is the time to get in touch.  You can do so here.

In other news, TIME has an article about the intense credit card lobby which is still working hard to prevent and delay reform.  These companies are trying to maximize profits before the Federal Reserve Board’s credit card rules go into effect in July of 2010, and they don’t want legislation to speed up the implementation of the new rules.

However, Senators Dodd and Schumer seem to think faster implementation would be a good thing.  They recently sent a letter to the Fed asking it to “invoke its emergency powers to make the rule effective immediately.”

Of course, the Senators could make the rule effective immediately through legislation.  Instead, Senator Dodd’s Credit CARD Act would go into effect 9 months from the day it passes, which is sooner than July of 2010 but not by much.  The House’s Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights has a one year implementation timeframe.  If the two bills are both passed, by the time they make it out of a Conference Committee and recieve the President’s signature, a one-year implementation date won’t be much of an improvement over July of 2010.

Which may be exactly what the credit card lobby has in mind.